Dan Balz:
Dissatisfaction and protest are roiling the politics of summer 2015. They are evident in the response to the angry rhetoric from Donald Trump, in the crowds that come to hear Bernie Sanders bash Wall Street and in the rallies demanding racial justice. For presidential candidates, there is no safe harbor. Ignore the mood at your peril; engage it at your peril.
The discontent is real, whether economic, racial or cultural. It knows no particular ideological boundaries. It currently disrupts both the Republican and Democratic parties. It reflects grievances that long have been bubbling. It reflects, too, the impatience with many political leaders — what they say and how they say it.
See the Elon James White quote at end. [ My error, the Elon James White quote is
in this NYT piece, same topic.]
WTVR:
Donald Trump has spent much of the early days of his presidential campaign taking on Jeb Bush.
But in Iowa on Saturday, the real estate mogul took shots at Scott Walker, who’s long stood atop polls in the Hawkeye State, home to the critical first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Trump — who is in second place in Iowa polls behind Walker — slammed the Wisconsin governor’s leadership.
“Wisconsin is doing terribly. It’s in turmoil,” Trump said at Oskaloosa High School in Oskaloosa. “The roads are a disaster because they don’t have money to rebuild them.”
He also accused Walker’s administration of borrowing due to a budget deficit, and painted him as a supporter of Common Core education standards, which are opposed by much of the Republican base.
That deficit is tremendous. Yuuuge.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Colin Woodard on America's nuttiest governor, Paul LePage:
One month later LePage—a pugnacious, hot-headed, sometimes vulgar Tea Party-style conservative—is facing a bipartisan investigation into potential abuse of power, a nascent impeachment effort by opponents in the lower State House chamber, and a federal lawsuit by the outgoing Democratic House speaker, who has accused the governor of blackmailing a non-profit school into revoking their job offer to him. Meanwhile, leaders of the Republican-controlled state Senate and many Republicans in the House have turned on the governor, helping overturn hundreds of his vetoes and line-item vetoes in lightning-paced voting sessions, sometimes at a rate of one every 25 seconds. His veto of the bipartisan budget was overturned, narrowly avoiding a state government shutdown. An aggressive attempt to appropriate wider veto authority for his office has been rebuffed by lawmakers and legal experts, but still threatens to plunge the state into a constitutional crisis.
“For whatever reason the governor has chosen to demonize the entire legislature and people in both parties who don’t always agree with him on everything,” says Sen. Roger Katz, a moderate Republican whose face adorned one of the ornaments on LePage’s Christmas tree. “There is so much he could get done if he chose to work with the legislature instead of against it.”
Mark Brewer, a political scientist at the University of Maine, puts it this way: “This is no longer a partisan battle or one primarily over policy. He’s turned it into an institutional fight, a knock-down, drag-out fight between executive and legislative prerogative.”
Toronto says
thank you, it's not fun.
Politico:
How Does Trump End?
16 experts from across the political spectrum share their predictions.
David Cay Johnston with a great read:
The new reality that political reporters obscured is this:
We once had a primary system that required candidates to genuflect before the oligarchs. But now one low-level oligarch is thumbing his nose at the rest of them — and under this new system, the much richer oligarchs, from Sheldon Adelson to the Koch brothers, are as helpless to shape the direction of events as — well, as the mass of voters who don’t have billions to donate.
The Republican nightmare is that Trump doesn’t need donors to stay in the race. The power of all that Koch and Adelson money is discounted, the way Trump sometimes pays creditors just pennies on the dollar.
And so while candidates who never had a chance anyway – Carson, Huckabee, Jindal, Pataki, and Perry among them – will be forced to withdraw for lack of donations, Trump can party on. And Trump told “Morning Joe” Scarborough Friday that if he is denied the nomination, he might run as an independent — unless the Republican establishment starts treating him respectfully.
Political reporters are missing the big story because they get rewarded for covering the horse race, not the issues; for going with the herd, not standing apart. Step apart from the herd and you’ll get picked off, perhaps by an editor or anchor taking a shot at you from the home office, perhaps by the hyenas on the campaign staff.
Jeff Greenfield:
The baseless notion that Obama is not really “one of us” is not confined to questions of birth. It is also linked to a broader notion that in countless ways, the president is not really “one of us.” For ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Obama’s worldview is explained as “Kenyan anti-colonial behavior.” For FOX’s Sean Hannity, Obama is “the Manchurian candidate,” whose (perhaps unconscious) attraction to America’s enemies was shaped by ties to onetime Weather Underground bomber Bill Ayres and his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright. For former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the conclusion is clear: “I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” he said in February. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
If these are the public views of some of the more prominent voices on the Right, it’s no surprise that a majority of Republicans believe that “deep down, Obama is a Muslim,” or that a significant chunk of Republicans think it’s likely that Obama is not a citizen.
But, to this chunk of the American electorate, there is another way in which Obama is demonstrating that he is not really “one of us”—it’s his support for comprehensive immigration reform, where Trump’s incendiary rhetoric has been a key fuel behind his rise to the top of the polls. Quite apart from the legitimate questions about immigration, the embrace of Trump’s portrait of an immigrant group that is peopled by drug traffickers and rapists fits perfectly with the idea that Obama is the champion of foreign ideas, foreign religions and foreign people. To understand how this dynamic works, we need to understand just how “different” Obama is from his predecessors, and how that difference resonates with a long, ignoble American tradition: the fear of “The Other.”
John Hudak:
Donald Trump, brought to you by 20 years of Republican politics
Roxane Gay:
I am tired of writing about slain black people, particularly when those responsible are police officers, the very people obligated to serve and protect them. I am exhausted. I experience this specific exhaustion with alarming frequency. I am all too aware that I have the luxury of such exhaustion.
One of the greatest lies perpetrated on our culture today is the notion that dash cameras on police cruisers and body cameras on police officers are tools of justice. Video evidence, no matter the source, can document injustice, but rarely does this incontrovertible evidence keep black people safe or prevent future injustices.
There was a video cam with Sandra Bland. She had a job. Those things did not protect her. It's completely appropriate to press all the candidates on what they're proposing to do about it.
Huffpost Pollster:
Why the drop among Republicans? - HuffPollster asked our followers on Twitter for their their best guesses and two theories emerged. First, a sense of disappointment that the Republican majorities have not made progress on their agenda, and perhaps have lost further ground to President Obama. Second, in one word, "Trump", or more broadly the "chaos" in the 2016 field. Some highlights:
-Richard Freedman (R): "GOP has not stopped ACA, moved to secure border, reduced spending in logical manner, etc. While generally not...possible, disappointing. Also primary looks like clown show from afar. [@richfreed here and here]
-Brian Stryker (D): "Perceived impotence? Obama/libs lots of recent wins, and GOP just hasn't had a lot of chances to block things up" [@BrianStryker]
-Conn Carroll (R): "what has the GOP Senate accomplished since January exactly?" [@conncarroll]
-Michelle Diggles (D): "Republicans expect their leaders to get their way. When they don't (e.g., ACA not repealed) feel lied to." [@MichelleDiggles]
-Matt Dabrowski (R): "Portions of the base continue to be strongly dissatisfied. At the risk of being reductive, this is the Ted Cruz story." [@MattDabrowski]
-Greg Dworkin (D): "Trump...with a dollup of losing important SCOTUS cases." [@DemFromCT here and here]